Snowflakes in the Wind
by Idoloni
Summary: RotG oneshots from the 100 Themes Challenge; no pairings, probably mostly angst; character and genre tags reflect the newest chapter only. Eighty-Eight: Jack doesn't understand their connection, and neither does anybody else.
1. 1: Life

**1. Life**

Isn't it funny how you only appreciate things properly when you no longer have them? It had been the case for many things throughout his life – like when Sammy, his best friend since forever, had moved so far away he might as well be living in another universe; or like when he was seven, and he'd awoken late at night to find his mother slipping a coin beneath his pillow, and had quickly lost his belief in the magical figures that up until then he'd been so enthralled by. That had never stopped him from encouraging his little sister's faith in them, though – belief was an important thing, maybe _the_ most important. He could never have ruined that for her.

His sister. Little Rosie. Five years younger than him, but they got on better than any other siblings in the town – in the country, even! Ensuring her happiness was his entire raison d'etre, and vice versa. When tears streamed down her face from some nasty comment, he'd be there to hold her close and make her smile again; when he holed himself up in the space between the wall and the bed, blinking back tears as the echoes of resentment and disapproval bounced around inside his head, she'd come and sit silently by his side, offering up all her love and support and never acknowledging her invincible big brother's underlying fragility.

He remembered one night, after probably the worst day either of them had ever experienced, after they'd received news that Georgie, their neighbour and Rosie's best friend, one of several little girls with a crush on the town's resident troublemaker, had lost her battle with the typhoid fever, leaving behind her adoring baby brother. They'd both been doing their best to sleep, but found that the grief would not let them. Rosie had crawled into bed with him, face still red and wet from crying, and she'd made him promise that he'd never leave her. He'd told her, softly but firmly, that he would always be there for her. Always, until they were both old and grey and wrinkly, like grandma. She'd hugged him tightly, and after that, the Sandman had come to lead them away from harsh reality to the soft snowfields of the mind, where they played for hours with the ghost of a friend. They woke with tears on their faces and peace in their hearts.

If he could have smiled at the memory, he would have done, but the cold had locked all of his muscles in place; instead, as his memories blurred and faded, he could only think, _I guess that makes me a liar_.

* * *

**Disclaimer:** Not mine, thank goodness; I don't want all that responsibility.

**A/N:** I am doing the 100 Themes Challenge, a bit of a pick-and-mix between 4 variations. I am writing for all of my fandoms, so the whole Challenge probably won't end up here. I expect 90% to be angsty or at least vaguely depressing, and there won't be any pairings because I don't ship any of these characters. Anyway, enjoy.


	2. 2: Youth

**2. Youth**

Ah, youth. What he wouldn't give for just a few days – hours, minutes, moments – as a boy again. These old bones hadn't travelled faster than walking pace in more than half a century and it was nigh impossible to remember what running felt like.

He'd been almost eighteen when it happened, fifty-eight years ago – a freak accident that nobody could have predicted; he'd been walking along the pavement, chatting quite cheerfully to one of his friends, and a car had hit a patch of black ice, swerved out of control and mounted the pavement – he'd felt a massive wave of pain sweeping up from his legs, heard someone scream, and the next thing he knew he was waking up in hospital with the doctors telling him he'd have to use a walking stick for the rest of his life.

He was devastated, of course. How could he not be? He'd spent his whole life climbing trees and fences and running through the woods and using his agility to his advantage in the annual snowball fights. He'd been angry at first, and since it had been only sheer bad luck there was no justifiable outlet for his fury and he spent his days in hospital simmering silently.

Then Jack had come to visit, sneaking through an opened window with an armful of books and a pack of cards; he hadn't wanted Jamie to spend a single moment bored. The poor Guardian had never expected his best friend to snap as soon as he saw the other boy – the almost-eighteen-year-old had yelled and spat vicious insults and pinned the blame solely on the winter spirit; it was _Jack_'s fault the car had swerved off the road, _Jack_'s fault he was in hospital, _Jack_'s fault he'd never run or jump or climb again.

Jack had turned tail and run; Jamie's last memory of the immortal had been of his utterly broken expression and the silver streams of reflected moonlight that he'd glimpsed as Jack turned to flee. Jamie had immediately regretted his words, and even moreso when the state was hit by the worst blizzard in over two hundred years. Just a few days later, the storm still raging, Jamie had turned eighteen and he never saw Jack again.

It wasn't that he'd stopped believing in the winter spirit, because how could he ever have not believed in his best friend for almost a decade? At first he'd thought that Jack was just avoiding him, but then Sophie had approached him with a sad look on her face and asked him if he could still see Jack. He'd been confused, asked her what she meant; she'd told him that Jack was standing right beside her.

Much to everyone's surprise – Jack's especially, if what Sophie said was true – Jamie had burst into tears and apologised interminably for everything he'd ever said and done and thought. His sister later told him that Jack had been frantic, trying to tell him to stop, that he understood his outburst, that he'd forgiven his friend ages ago, but his pleas fell on deaf ears; the poor spirit had tried to comfort him, but his icy hands just passed right through Jamie's shoulder.

Even though Jamie couldn't see him anymore, Jack was there throughout his life, making his presence known. Jamie's hat had been plucked right off of his head at his graduation, snow had fallen at his wedding, an icy but still comforting chill had gripped his shoulder at his mother's funeral and he'd received a beautiful ice sculpture when his first child had been born.

Jack still visited every winter to play with the children of Burgess; Jamie could always tell from the excited giggles of his grandchildren at the first signs of snow, and the messages left on his frosted bedroom windows. It was a comfort, to know that his best friend was still there, that he still remembered his oldest believer, but at the same time Jamie felt like crying - he'd never see Jack's face ever again, never hear his voice, never even notice his presence if he didn't announce it with a blizzard.

Oh, to be young again, just for a day, an hour, a moment.

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**A/N:** _This due to my headcanon that, whether you believe or not, past the age of eighteen the Guardians are invisible to you._


	3. 4: Change

**4. Change**

He and change have a strange sort of relationship; it fascinated him, and yet he hated it more than anything in the world, more even than the loneliness and the insults and the sense of never belonging anywhere.

He has lived for more than three hundred years – he doesn't know exactly how many, because he has long since stopped counting birthdays and anyway it wasn't like he'd ever known, truly, what day he'd been born. Created. Whatever. Mostly now he just counts the end-of-century celebrations, of which he's seen only three and it's only been a few years since the last.

Point is, he has been around for a long time, in human terms if not in spirits'. He has borne witness to the rise and fall of civilisations and all the wonders and the horrors humankind has to offer. Most of all, though, what he sees is progress. Change.

Time passes – some people die, others are born to take their places. Technology evolves rapidly, facilitating the lives of those able to get their hands on it. New animals and plants are discovered, and mankind reaches for the stars. Soon he has to worry about not hitting planes when he goes flying, he has to think about staying off the busy roads and he has to be careful about frosting over highways, and even then he still causes hundreds – thousands – of crashes every year.

It's fascinating, all the new and exciting ways to have fun that they've invented, and at the same time all the things they've created to make them sad, like taxes and work and school. He doesn't disapprove of all jobs, though, and, really, he doesn't see quite why children complain as much as they do about school, because he's sat in a few classes and honestly didn't find it too bad. Sure, it had upset him a little because at the time they were basically disproving his very existence, but it was interesting all the same, and, hey, they didn't know any different so how could he blame them?

And yet...and yet he hates it. He hates that things change and evolve and move on. It's all transient, impermanent, ephemeral, and nothing lasts – except him. He has lived for three centuries, give or take, and he has not changed.

In an effort to buck the trend, to make himself feel like he has evolved, like he has progressed, _grown_, he chucks the old brown cape and ancient shirt, and steals a blue, blue hoodie from a shop somewhere in Europe; maybe Paris, maybe Berlin, either way they won't miss it. It'll soon be replaced by some new fashion trend that'll last barely five minutes in his immortal eyes.

He puts it on, and for all of ten seconds he feels like he has changed. The ten seconds pass, and suddenly it feels like he has been wearing the hoodie since forever. He stares forlornly at the abandoned cloak, but he does not pick it up or put it back on. He is still exactly the same person he had been five minutes ago, and this realisation comes as something of a shock.

So much for change.


	4. 6: Break

**6. Break**

It isn't for a long time after he'd joined them that they begin to realise quite how, how _damaged_, how _broken_, their newest recruit was, and still is. He has been a part of their group for decades now, and they had thought – assumed – that the Jack they saw was the real Jack, not just some cleverly-painted mask, but apparently this was not – and still isn't – the case.

He's been lying to them through his pearly white teeth for years, and they've never realised. Only now does the truth finally surface – Sandy stumbled across Jack having a very animated conversation with his bed post, pausing occasionally and hmm-ing and nodding his head as if listening to a reply; more than once, he'd fallen abruptly silent in the middle of a sentence, as if he'd been interrupted. Then he'd spotted Sandy's inquisitive look and fled; they found him three weeks later in Antarctica, rambling to the penguins about that one time back in the eighteen hundreds when he'd tried, in a bout of intense boredom, to ice over Uluru. He'd almost run at the sight of the Guardians, but something had stopped him – he told them later that he just wanted to get it over with; even Jack Frost, brother/son of the Wind, couldn't evade them forever.

So they drag him back to the Pole, sit him down in the closest chair to hand - a small wooden thing, barely more than a stool with a backrest, but comfortable enough with the rather flattened and faded red- and white-striped cushion – and rant at the poor winter spirit. They demand to know when this had started, if he'd even _tried_ to do anything about it, why oh why hadn't he _said_ anything?! So busy interrogating their youngest member, it takes them a moment to realise that he is talking. His eyes are closed, and he speaks strangely, but somehow it feels right. This, they realise, is the real him talking – monologuing, really; by now, the rest of the rooms occupants are silent as the grave and sit in a semicircle on the floor in front of the pale boy's chair.

He tells them all about his youth, about being a young spirit with no memories and no understanding of the world, being ridiculed by his peers for his cluelessness; they never believed him when he said he was completely new, but they never told him what else he could've been. He speaks of lost innocence and decades spent in silence, centuries in solitude, and his listeners feel their hearts break. He recounts the story of his life, tries to explain his connection to his oldest friend in the world – the Wind – but his words here are jumbled; it's clear that he does not understand the bond himself, it just..._is_. It transcends the use of mere words, and they doubt they'll ever really be able to grasp even the basic idea of it.

Then he tells them that, yes, he is fully aware that he is more than a few snowflakes short of a blizzard, and he has been for quite some time. Yes, he's tried to stop, but it's more impossible than herding cats.

Finally, he falls silent, and it takes them a moment to realise this as he sits there staring at them with his ice-blue eyes. Someone moves, and suddenly everyone is on their feet, bounding forward for a group hug, muttering apologies and reprimands and reassuring nonsense. He admits that he never wanted them to find out, and someone jokes that he's a stupendous actor, and then he quite casually tells them how he died and that he advises against drowning as a way to go. This only makes them hug him tighter, after they've got over the shock, and it's only when he starts to wriggle in is seat and lapse into histrionics about a lack of oxygen that they let him go. They tell him firmly that they love him, that they will help, that he will never be alone again. They smile in satisfaction when he shoots them a smile of his own.

The idea that the smile isn't genuine never crosses their minds.

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**A/N:**_ I know I said I wouldn't write any more for _Voice_, but then this prompt came up. Oh well._


	5. 88: Wind

**88. Wind**

His connection to the Winds is inexplicable, they say. It's never happened, ever, not before nor after the dawn of time. There has never been a spirit so intimately bonded to the Four Winds.

It's both a strength and a weakness, blessing and curse, for both parties involved. For Jack, the Wind is his best and, for a long time, only friend, though to call their relationship a simple friendship would be the understatement of the millennium Their connection runs far deeper than a friendship could ever hope for, deeper even than the bond between mother and child. This could well be because Jack has not and never will grow up; his and the Wind's relationship is what the mother-and-child bond could become if neither party aged for all eternity. The Wind's comforting omnipresence throughout his early life was likely the only thing that kept him sane; it told him stories, showed him games, taught him how to live and be happy whatever might come his way, and comforted him when he was just too hurt to believe in that philosophy.

The downside, though, was that if he lost his staff, not only would the Wind be unable to sense him, but it would feel to him like a part of him was missing. And if the staff was broken…it would feel like his very soul was being torn in two.

What the Winds get out of this relationship is perhaps not so obvious, until you realise that up until Jack came along, nobody believed that the Wind was truly sentient. Spirits with a natural affinity to it, such as the Seasonal Spirits, had always been able to sense the Winds as physical things, but had never really been able to communicate. The Wind, who was for all intents and purposes a creature far, far older than the Moon, who still remembered a time when the Earth was only molten rock and ashes, who was omnipresent and eternal, who had seen the rise and fall of civilisations and had watched mountains grow and continents drift apart – and had been treated like a dumb animal for all of its existence. In Jack, the winds finally had someone to confide in, someone to talk to who would listen, someone who could hear it like no creature before him, someone who treated it like a person, a friend, family. Someone to love who loved it back.

That's not to say that this closeness did not come without a price. In return for this attachment, it felt all of Jack's hurts, shared all of his pain, and the loss that it felt when the staff, the conduit, was out of its charge's hands was agonising. It could no longer feel its best friend/brother/son, couldn't talk, couldn't focus, could only rage and writhe and panic until the staff was in Jack's hands again. And when the staff broke… As a non-corporeal being, the Wind had never felt pain before it met Jack; the torment it endured when the conduit broke was indescribable.

But never, ever so bad as to wish the connection away.

The connection is, in and of itself, quite bizarre. Jack and the Wind communicate neither through words in any language nor in images of any complexity, or at least this is what Jack says. They communicate instead through feelings and meanings – not the words or the pictures, but through what a thing_ is_. Like the word 'tree' does not inherently mean anything; it is merely a sound, a combination of letters that we have assigned meaning to. Even a picture – a drawing, a photograph – could not do a tree justice. A simple image does not tell you what a tree _is_, it merely implies it. This is how Jack explains it when asked, but it is clear that it is not a very accurate explanation from the expression on his face when he tells it. It is something he instinctively understands, a thing he knows and has always known, but it defies and transcends the use of words. He says that the only way to understand it is to understand the meaning of it – a meaning that can't be communicated in words. It's like a half-formed thought, he says – it's _there_, in your head, you can _see_ it, _sense_ it, and it's so_ clear_, so easily comprehensible, but you just can't put words to it because that'll change its meaning and,_ and-!_

It is a subject that Jack gets very worked up about.

Another topic that makes the winter spirit quite excitable is the one that forms when the question is asked: How close, exactly, are Jack and the Wind?

The most accurate and understandable answer to date has been that neither are the other, but their personalities are closer than a schizophrenic's. Their very minds are intimately linked and bound together, always 'talking', sharing thoughts and feelings and emotions. Jack does not control the Wind, and the Wind does not control Jack. They behave like one entity, but in essence, they are separate; they could survive without each other, just not happily.

It can be difficult for the Guardians to be telling Jack about something, only for him to say, _oh, sorry, I didn't catch that, I was listening to the Wind_. But it certainly has its upsides; Jack is the easiest person in all the world to contact, because all you need do is tell the Wind. Jack has even persuaded the Wind to help call meetings, for when the Aurora is too obvious and blatant a signal.

Jack doesn't understand their connection and neither does anybody else, but neither he nor the Wind would give it up for anything.

* * *

**A/N:** _ Okay, screw order, I'm posting this now. If you wanted me to sum this up in a sentence, it's just me rambling and trying to explain how I see the relationship between winter spirit and wind._


End file.
